Grant an old rogue this much for credit: the obituary writers have been given a very early shout. When a bearded 81-year-old says that he can no longer manage supreme power over a nation's life, big cigars, death, gross economic incompetence and free speech, the end is, very possibly, nigh. Sharpen the pencils.

Should anyone mourn Fidel Castro? I count that as an interesting question. A younger generation has probably forgotten what it was, once, to be a Fidelista. The name Batista means nothing much to anyone these days. America's former habit of turning entire Central American nations into labour camps, brothels or casinos has been overlooked. But Cuba and the American republic remain locked in a very strange dance.

Which partner would one choose? Whom would you celebrate, truly, on liberty's behalf? These are serious questions.

Castro's 49 years of maximum leadership have not led his little country towards prosperity. You could say, on the contrary hand, that destruction was America's only plan for Cuba after the Bay of Pigs. To enfeeble, to seduce and then to destroy: in short, to colonise. For the sake of the Chicago Mob. But the local patriot - no commie, to begin with - refused the usual deal. Treason, apparently.

Fidel is an interesting case. John McCain, for one, despises him with a passion. How will that work out, if the old Marxista expires, if the Democrats blow the game, and if the normal rules of American power are reasserted? Another benign invasion? Fidel starts to sound, not for the first time, like one of those dire, deliberate Monty Python jokes. What did Castro ever do for us?

Apart from the health service, obviously. And the water supply. And the schools. And the nurseries, clearly, and then the roads and the wages, probably. And the education, perhaps?

Standing out, and proud, against the United States is not a small thing, these of all the days. Nothing to be proud of, either, if you fail to respect the rights of your people for five decades. A dictator is what a dictator does.

I am not Comrade Castro's biggest fan. I have problems with his life and with his leadership. I have difficulties, equally, with the habit of locking people up when they express an opinion. I could wage other little disputes over the details of his allegedly socialist alternatives to most things. Some day.

There is a different argument to be had if the commandante is truly leaving us, finally, after five long decades. A socialist world or a capitalist existence? Northern Rock or the ancient Fidel?

These questions are neither posed nor proffered, in most of our media, these frosty days. They matter, though.

Some western triumphalism will attend Fidel's passing. That much is inevitable. The passage of a noun towards a verb - "to critique", they tell me - is probably unavoidable, even in this columnar game. But we still, I think and hope, retain a tiny space within which we can insist on words. Even the dull words.

Fidel Castro was the last best prayer of my generation. That entire sentence sounds - because it is - absurd. But if the old, former habits of political discourse have passed with Fidel we have all died, slightly, and more than somewhat. Sharpen the pencils again.

The people who run around Holyrood, and around most newsrooms, and who swarm over Westminster, have not the faintest idea about what any of this means. Not a clue. They are, in fact, a little hazy, most of the time, over who this bronzed Mr Castro might once have been, editorially-speaking. No idea.

Here's a notion. The impending death of Fidel could just, possibly, turn the old Marxist horror into an idea worth another good long look. Just a thought, you understand. It happens, sometimes. Once a century, or thereabouts.

I am too old for most versions of hope. The regally announced, impending death of Fidel strikes me as a celebration missed. I don't care. I will, the best I can, honour the ancient old goat just for enduring five decades in the universe of American hyper-power. He outlasted them. But I come from an older tradition, for better or worse.

In that world, we do not honour vain, jaded fools with big cigars. We do not care, mostly, for laundered battle fatigues, five-hour speeches, and lectures on the imperatives of imperialism. A health service makes a difference: it was once regarded as the least you should deliver. But you do not get the big prize just for living long, or for locking up everyone who complains about our private life.

Personally, I would defend Castro against all-comers. Think not of it, if at all, as a habit, mind. We are, in my view, the last best hope of the species, all we pathetic miserable left-types with our risible views on fundamental economic matters and human rights. Fidel didn't help much, to us, during most of his long dictatorship. But symbolism will always count.

When the old fool stumbles, dies and falls - as he will, very soon, like the ideal character from some cheap piece of magic realism - what will we say? Good riddance? That would be easy, and quick, and more or less true. It would do, probably.

Another idea: if the world loses Castro, after all these years, there is no-one else. Not one. So here's the real conundrum, and the real question: why is there no-one else? Why no opposition?

Fidel Castro became, over the years, one of those plastic pieces on a cheap imagined heroic board game when everyone forgot the point of the play. What's left? Who's left? Who cares? Some old dreary charlatan dressing up in designer battle dress in a cheesy tourist resort? Best not.

I shall miss Fidel, though. I shall go on insisting, too, that a healthy society always requires a revolutionary instinct. There I go, radical chic (somewhat) and revolutionary. The truly interesting thought, however, is that these impulses may no longer require the usual conventional post-imperial setting. Perhaps they are just here, and now, and in your paper.

Somewhere in in the National Library of Scotland there is a letter written by my great-grandfather's little brother. In the note the little man is striving, and trying to keep his temper, to tell an incompetent miner how to run a basic political meeting.

How best to describe it? This: in the note, one James Connolly is telling one James Keir Hardie that he, Mr Hardie, lacks certain essential, fundamental, organisational skills. And that's how a revolution is born. Usually.

Or in the case of the Maximum Leader of Latin America and Beyond, perhaps not.